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Friday, July 11, 2025

Transport Minister responds to Kublalsingh - No highway works ongoing

by

Sascha Wilson
2029 days ago
20191221
Minister of Works and Transport Rohan Sinanan, right, speaks with NIDCO project manager, Dennis Harricharan, left, NIDCO vice president Steve Garibsingh, Ag Chief Technical officer Narvin Ramsingh and director of Highways Chatram Sooklal, during a tour of the Oropouche River Bridge in Debe yesterday.

Minister of Works and Transport Rohan Sinanan, right, speaks with NIDCO project manager, Dennis Harricharan, left, NIDCO vice president Steve Garibsingh, Ag Chief Technical officer Narvin Ramsingh and director of Highways Chatram Sooklal, during a tour of the Oropouche River Bridge in Debe yesterday.

Rishi Ragoonath

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan has rub­bished claims by High­way Reroute Move­ment (HRM) leader Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh that work has com­menced on the Debe to Mon De­sir leg of the high­way.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day dur­ing a news con­fer­ence in Debe at the site of the un­com­plet­ed Oropouche riv­er bridge which falls with­in the con­tentious leg of the high­way, Sinanan al­so de­fend­ed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley. He said Kubals­ingh made “some se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions and at­tacks” on the prime min­is­ter at his re­cent press con­fer­ence at the of­fice of the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice.

“I want to rub­bish the mis­in­for­ma­tion Mr Kublals­ingh would have put in the pub­lic do­main. One, that the high­way from Debe to Mon De­sir has restart­ed with­out con­sul­ta­tion. We have not start­ed that high­way, what we are do­ing is we are pro­tect­ing this bridge in­fra­struc­ture and there is a con­nec­tor road from Mon De­sir to Fyz­abad to bring re­lief for the peo­ple in that area. It is not in the wet­lands. And it is part of the oblig­a­tion that we have through the court of ar­bi­tra­tion in Lon­don. Two, that Dr Row­ley was re­spon­si­ble for the flood­ing be­cause he built the em­bank­ment. Mr Kublals­ingh needs to go back in the archives and see pic­tures of for­mer min­is­ter Warn­er, Collin Par­tap and Ram­bachan, all hav­ing con­fronta­tions with him where he vir­tu­al­ly con­front­ed all of them and it is un­fair that he can come now and for­get about the past and blame Dr Row­ley for the flood­ing.”

He in­sin­u­at­ed that Kublals­ingh’s claims were po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed. “He was sit­ting at the ta­ble with his po­lit­i­cal al­lies and we need to un­der­stand that when peo­ple are un­der se­vere pres­sure from flood­ing and dif­fer­ent changes in cli­mate changes and so we should not fan the fire and try to bring pol­i­tics in­to every­thing,” he re­called, in­di­cat­ing to Kublals­ingh in a meet­ing that the gov­ern­ment had no in­ten­tion at that point to restart the Debe to Mon De­sir seg­ment and that their fo­cus was com­plet­ing the seg­ment from San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin.

Not­ing that the meet­ing was now the sub­ject of lit­i­ga­tion against the gov­ern­ment, he said, “I re­gret the day I did that (met with Kublals­ingh) be­cause that end­ed up as a mat­ter in court.”

When high­way con­trac­tor, OAS, was ter­mi­nat­ed in 2016, he said the gov­ern­ment was able to re­cov­er $940 mil­lion from the con­trac­tor through the court. How­ev­er, he said one of the con­di­tions un­der that agree­ment was that the mon­ey has to be spent on cer­tain as­pects of work OAS was con­tract­ed to do.

Steve Garib­s­ingh of Nid­co said the seg­ments in­clud­ed Dum­fries to Point Fortin round­about, Gol­con­da to Pe­nal and Mon De­sir to Fyz­abad. He said they were just com­plet­ing the Oropouche riv­er bridge to pre­vent the ma­te­r­i­al from wast­ing away which was one of the con­di­tions set out by the court.

“We are do­ing no oth­er works in the area. This struc­ture is wider than the ex­ist­ing bridge no way con­tribut­ing to flood­ing in this area.”

En­dors­ing this view, NID­CO project man­ag­er Den­nis Har­richa­ran said the fo­cus was the Dum­fries to Dun­lop seg­ment and the pro­ject­ed com­ple­tion time was late 2020, ear­ly 2021.

Min­istry of Works and Trans­port act­ing chief tech­ni­cal of­fi­cer, Navin Ram­s­ingh, said the vol­ume of traf­fic com­ing out of Debe had far ex­ceed­ed the ca­pac­i­ty of the SS Erin Road.

“This high­way would have ben­e­fit­ed this area in the sense that we would have sub­stan­tial­ly re­duced traf­fic on SS Erin Road and Debe so peo­ple could get to Pe­nal and en­vi­rons eas­i­er.”

He said the im­prove­ment of drainage al­so formed part of the high­way de­sign.


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